The significance of hailing Starkville Police Department’s long-awaited move into its new headquarters on a Friday the 13th wasn’t lost on former mayor Parker Wiseman.
Yet for Wiseman, the traditionally unlucky date marked a moment of triumph for the city, its citizens and police officers as Starkville hosted a grand opening for the newly renovated police department.
“We are going to celebrate here on Friday the 13th that this is the last Friday the 13th that this issue will loom over our community,” Wiseman said. “I have no doubt tomorrow, what our police force is going to do is what they always do. They’re going to wake up with courage, determination and resolve and walk into this facility and make sure that we’re safe in this city.
“The only thing that’s going to be different on this Saturday the 14th than all the other Saturday the 14ths they’ve woken up is they will finally be walking into a facility that, just like them, is as good as you’ll find anywhere,” he added.
Police Chief Frank Nichols, who has served 25 years with the department, said Friday’s grand opening was “surreal.” Nichols started when the building SPD now occupies served both as police headquarters and city hall. He said it’s hard to believe how much the renovation improved the building, which originally opened as an Army National Guard armory about 70 years ago.
“The before and after pictures tell it all,” he said. “I have to look at the after pictures to believe where it came from. A lot of the new officers don’t know the struggles we went through in this facility. The flooding, sewage backing up in our workspace — things like that. We’ve been through all of it in my 25 years here.”
The facility
SPD’s new headquarters have been redesigned to turn the city’s former administrative center on Lampkin Street into a facility built for police. It’s the first building in the city’s history that’s designed to function solely as a police station.
The front features a public area, with a meeting space SPD Public Information Officer Brandon Lovelady said is available for citizens to use.
The police station is improved throughout, from the booking and holding areas to larger office areas for investigators and command staff.
Many of the building’s original features have been revealed or restored through the renovation, from flooring, walls, support columns or windows in some areas to the arched ceiling above the second floor and the old stage that now holds the department’s briefing room.
Nichols said one of the most important aspects about the new station is it will unify SPD under one roof. The department has been scattered across Starkville for more than a year now due to construction on the police station.
During his remarks, Nichols thanked the officers who bore the difficulties of waiting for the project to finish.
“We didn’t have a home,” he said. “We were in seven different locations. There are some people standing there, some people in the audience that work for this department that I probably haven’t seen in two months because we were so spread out.”
Some work remains to be completed on the building — the city is working to resolve an issue where water seeps into the basement. However officials have said that will not impact the police department’s day-to-day operations.
A long road
Friday’s ceremony marked the formal opening of the facility after its $5.4 million renovation started last year. Starkville struggled for decades to find a permanent home for SPD — Nichols said the new station has been 20 years in the making, and Wiseman said it’s the one issue that dogged him every day of his eight years in office, which ended June 30.
Architect Gary Schafer, who designed the renovation, said he’s worked, in some fashion, on designing potential police stations for Starkville for 16 years.
“That would be four mayors, seven boards of aldermen,” he said. “I don’t know how many referendums we went through. When someone asked how many police stations we designed, I said ‘I designed five for you.’ We’re fortunate — I think I’m done designing police stations for the city of Starkville.”
Nichols said the issue even tested his spiritual faith.
“Before I even took over as chief, the Lord has given me this vision,” Nichols said. “That was one of my objectives, when I interviewed for this job as chief. I knew that the Lord had this in store. There was doubt — a lot of nights, a lot of days, there was doubt. But I had to make sure I kept myself encouraged and just believing in the vision the Lord gave me.”
Wiseman recalled a failed vote on a $8.45 million bond issue in 2011 — the first attempt to fund a police station during his years in office, which he referred to as his own “Friday the 13th.” The issue, which needed 60 percent of the vote in a public referendum, only managed to garner support from 44.5 percent of voters.
He said it was “sobering” to wake up the next day after the measure’s defeat. But Wiseman said he believed it was the men and women in SPD that helped push efforts along to successfully gaining a new police station.
“What they did next is they woke up and they did what they always do,” Wiseman said. “They served with honor, integrity, never for a moment did they pout, there was no blue flu because that project didn’t work out.
“I didn’t receive a list of grievances and demands about what the city was not doing for the police department,” he added. “As a matter of fact, what I received was words of thanks for giving it a shot, words of encouragement — we’ll pick our chin up, we’ll keep going and we’ll make it. That, ultimately, is how we got here. That, as much as the facility itself, is what we’re celebrating.”
First-term Mayor Lynn Spruill, who made brief remarks during Friday’s ceremony, acknowledged Wiseman’s work in seeing the project through.
“While my administration may have taken it across the goal line, his administration started the long drive, and it was a 100-yard drive,” she said. “They started from square one and made it all the way.”
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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